Hello, welcome back to the podcast that every week tries to explain what the hell is going on on this very complicated continent.

This is Katie in Paris. Who are you?

I am, Dominic, in Amsterdam. And there's been a lot going on this week. It's been one of those weeks again.

It has been one of those weeks. What's been happening over there in Amsterdam? Oh, nothing here particularly, actually. I've been more focused than what's happening in the UK where the government seems to be like deliberately tanking the economy. Yeah. Yay. It's sort of weirdly fascinating to watch and very painful at the same time. I'm sort of half getting the popcorn out and half crying. Yeah. I read a really good tweet this week that said there are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks where decades happen and then there are decades full of weeks where decades happen. This is one of those decades.

Yeah, it kind of summed up the feeling of living through the past few insane years.

But hey, the Europeans podcast is a stable thing.

Nothing happening here.

Just a regular episode.

And this week we're going to be talking about something, another big thing that happened in Europe in Italy.

You've probably heard by now that

Italy had an election last weekend that was won by the far right party brothers of Italy,

allowing them to go into government with other parties in the right wing block and probably

installing Georgia Meloni as Italy's first female prime minister. It's one of those elections

that journalists refer to as a political earthquake,

even if it was in this case a somewhat predicted political earthquake. But the fact that Italy will have

a far-right leader is extraordinary and pretty terrifying for many reasons. So this week we had to

call up someone Italian to find out why this happened and what it means

for Italy and Europe as a whole. We'll be joined by the Italian philosopher Lorenzo Marciili

later on in the show to find out more about what happened. But first, it's time for

Who has had a good week, Dominic?

It's been a good week for a person in Spain.

This week, a person who wasn't a person last week, but this week is now legally a person,

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